Where Do I Start Conversion Testing? – Conversion Wednesday

By EXCLUSIVE teamApril 7, 2010

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Today’s Topic is: Where do I begin conversion testing and making improvements to my website? I will be your host, Dan T. We all know that improving your ecommerce store experience is good for business and your users, but clients ask me all the time, where do I begin making improvements, and how do I prioritize my ideas? Today I will show you an easy way for finding the best place to begin conversion testing or making changes to your website.

First, listen to your users.

This is easier said then done. You’re going have to make analytics your best friend and find out how users are travelling through your website and where they are abandoning ship. In Google analytics the best place to start is to take a look at your top exit pages. You can find this report under Content ? Top Exit Pages. This report will show you quickly where your users are leaving your website. If you listen closely your users, they may be screaming at you to fix a certain page on your website or they may be quietly dropping a hint that a certain page is not answering all of their needs.

Second, ask: why?

Typically I find the answer to this question lies in how they arrived to your website. Again in Google analytics on the same report you can click on the drop down in the second column and select keyword. This will show you the specific keywords your users are leaving on. If they came in searching for dog food and you only show them cat nip they will most likely leave. After I gather that information on a website I have a good idea on where the problem areas are within the site.

Third, I prioritize the pages and changes I want to test

The first rule of thumb, start with the section or page with the most amount of traffic. This will allow your change or test to have the biggest impact for your users and your business.

Second, start small with low “hanging fruit”. Solve one problem at a time on each page. If your users are simply not finding the right products based on the keyword they search for, focus on placing the right products higher on the page. Testing will minimize risks involved with alienating current customers that do like the selection on that page.

Third, have fun. Enjoy watching your conversion rate go up and making your users happier by continually following these three simple steps.

I hope today’s conversion Wednesday was helpful. Exclusive Concepts offers Conversion Booster as a service to help our clients identify the best place to start testing on their website to continually increase conversion rates.

We would be happy to audit the opportunity that we believe exists for your site in terms of conversion improvements. Give us a call at 1-800-504-4324 to reserve a free audit today.